Life Takers
by ChaosMarine1992
Summary: The Life Takers are a Chapter of Space Marines feared for their merciless fury, dedicated to sacrficing their foes to the Emperor. Read and Review, rated T for considerable violence
1. Prologue

**Welcome to the story of the Life Takers, my own Chapter of Space Marines.  
Please be patient as I may not update frequently. I appreciate any constructive, civilly-worded criticism.**

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Prologue

It was dark in the festering, corrupted heart of the space hulk _Monstrous Agony_, so dark that their auto-senses could just barely cut through the stygian gloom even with the assistance of their power armour's night-vision. Every Space Marine still standing in the cramped cogitator chamber knew that the odds were stacked against them, but none failed to find the courage within himself to adhere to his duty to the Imperium.

A single beam of light from the ceiling cut through the darkness like a laser lance slicing through the pitch-black expanse of space as the lights in the high ceiling of the archive flickered to life. What would have been revealed to an onlooker was a fearsome sight indeed; twelve hulking Terminator Marines, clad in their awesome Tactical Dreadnought Armour, their colours night-black with blood-red shoulder plates. Their armour was far from pristine, with long, ragged gouges and bullet scars lining the heavy-gauge plasteel. Some were scars of battles long gone, for every Terminator of the Space Marines was inevitably a veteran of centuries' worth of conflict, but many of the scars that they bore today were fresh, bestowed upon them by the weapons of their ancient and most hated enemy, the forces of Chaos.

Chaplain Kelrond pulled himself onto one of the ancient logic engines, surveying what remained of the strike force through the eye slits of his skull-mask. While not one of the towering Terminators, he nevertheless cut an impressive figure, his ancient power armour adorned with numerous purity seals and honour badges, a bolt pistol held in his left hand, and his crackling crozius arcanum held in his right. His battle-brothers returned his steely gaze, looking to their beloved Chaplain for his final words of inspiration in their darkest hour.

"Battle-brothers!" cried Kelrond in a voice that was loud, resonant and undeniably mighty. "What is our creed?"

"With bolters in our hands, and faith in our hearts, we crush the enemies of the Imperium!" intoned every Terminator, speaking as one despite being many.

"And we have done so, my worthy brothers!" nodded Kelrond, stamping one armoured foot down as if to punctuate his sentence. "We are Life Takers! The holy warriors of the Emperor, who is our father on Terra!"

Kelrond leapt from the cogitator, landing on the deck-plates with a dull 'thud!' He glanced at each Terminator, their individual names flashing through his mind, great champions of humanity. They were more than the storm bolters and power fists they brought to bear against the enemy, they were the holy blade of the God-Emperor himself. His eternal will made manifest.

Life Takers. Kelrond reflected for a brief moment on that proud title. They were Life Takers, among the finest Chapters of Space Marines the Imperium had the pride to call its own, descended from the mighty Ultramarines of Roboute Guilliman. Adeptus Astartes. The Emperor's finest.

"The enemy awaits us!" Kelrond began slowly walking towards the doors of the cogitator chamber, beyond which lay the _Monstrous Agony's _warp engines. Beyond those doors were also hundreds of the enemy, hideous daemons of the Plague God, Nurgle, and the foul human cultists who enslaved themselves to the dark, malevolent will of Chaos. "We. Shall. Kill. Them. All!"

Gruff cheers erupted from a few of the Terminators, some of whom clenched the fingers of their power fists in anticipation. They were all that remained of initial force of Life Takers that had boarded the space hulk, the rest having lost their lives in the fight against the evil minions of the Warp that infested the accursed vessel, but in their deaths they delivered hundreds of sacrifices to the Emperor. That was what the Life Takers believed, that every death on the battlefield, whether theirs or their enemies', were sacrifices to the Master of Humanity.

"Our brothers may never find us, but by the Emperor, none shall soon forget us!" roared the Chaplain. "Our brothers will watch as this desecrated hulk falls from the void and dies upon the surface of the world beneath us! Our enemies will feel our bolters and blades searing at their flesh even when we cast them back into the Warp for centuries to come!"

His pace quickened, and the Terminators stood aside, letting the venerable warrior pass. As he walked by them, they fell into formation behind him, storm bolter held raised and ready. Even as he strode by, a hazy, incandescent aura flared to life around him, the energy shield of his rosarius coming to life, wreathing the Chaplain in divine protection. He stopped just short of the doors, where Kelrond could almost make out the guttural, slavering noises of their foe as they waited for the Life Takers to burst through. Kelrond turned, and every Terminator saw the blazing fire in the old Space Marine's brilliant eyes, the fires of faith and courage that every Space Marine aspired to achieve.

"This is our day! Their doom has come! Let the Enemy hear our voices and let them tremble in terror!" he raised his crozius high, gripping it as tightly as he could.

"By our blood and our honour, we kill for the Emperor!" shouted the Terminators, the ancient battle-cry of the Life Takers. Hearing those sacred words, Kelrond threw his head back and let loose a great roar that shook the room with his fury.

"Watch your flanks and make straight for the heart of this accursed place!" Augmented muscles bunching and his armour's servos gathering strength, Kelrond slammed his massive shoulder and threw the doors open wide to the sight of a horde of mutated cultists and plague daemons.

"For the glory of the Imperium! CHAAAAAARGE!"

Swinging his crozius in a sparking blaze of power, Chaplain Kelrond of the Life Takers lifted his heart to the Emperor, and charged.


	2. Part 1, Chapter 1

**Forgot to add disclaimer: I do not own Warhammer 40,000 or anything related to it. Warhammer 40,000 is property of Games Workshop, (insert relevant legal stuff here).**

Part One, Chapter One

Captain Sophion stood at the command dais of the _Rebuker_'s bridge, surveying the small planet that turned slowly before his view through the transparent viewport of the strike cruiser. The veteran Space Marine was fully arrayed in his ornate artificer armour, the night-black of his Chapter's colour lined with silver, the white skull and claw of the Life Takers set into the blood-red ceramite of his armour's shoulder pad. He gazed silently out of the viewport with hard-set blue eyes, his weathered face worn and drawn by centuries of war.

The world he was looking upon was a small planet named Salthion, a planet once colonized by the Imperium of Man but largely abandoned after its sparse resources were depleted. A desolate world of mountains and rocky plains, its only city was left a collection of hollowed-out hab-shells inhabited by feral humans who had long forgotten their origins. Left forgotten by the Imperium, the world had somehow become a battleground for warbands of orks and heretics. Recent reports had reached the Life Takers several weeks ago, indicating that a warband of Chaos Space Marines, apparently members of the Death Guard, had arrived and begun an assault on the planet, attacking the ork clans that inhabited Salthion's surface. For what purpose, Sophion didn't pretend to care, nor did he ever want or need to. He was here, along with his battle-brothers of the First and Second Companies, to carry forth the Emperor's divine will. That was all that mattered.

As it happened, the strike force of Life Takers assigned to the strike cruiser was too few to undertake a full-scale crusade against the heathen and heretics on Salthion. The Chapter was currently occupied with simultaneously fending off a splinter tendril of the tyranids and suppressing a particularly vicious insurgency of heretics in a nearby sector. In fact, Sophion felt that they there was little to warrant an operation here, in this little nowhere backwater, but orders were orders, and it was the captain's duty to carry them out regardless of his opinion.

The bridge was quiet due to the absence of any Chapter serfs, with only servitors wired to the various control stations of the strike cruiser. As such, the noise made by the doors of the bridge opening and heavy footfalls was clear to Sophion's enhanced hearing. Sophion turned to face the newcomer, and immediately gave him a short nod of respect.

Chaplain Terrion strode calmly onto the bridge, coming up to the captain. Terrion was young for a Chaplain, barely five or six decades old, but Sophion knew the company Chaplain was one of the most accomplished heroes of the Chapter. Like the captain, Terrion was clad in his full power armour, the ancient vestment adorned with countless purity seals, prayer strips bearing long and intricate verses in High Gothic, and the signature rosarius of the Ecclesiarchy hanging around the Chaplain's neck. Terrion did not wear the typical full-faced skull mask of many Chaplains; instead his Mark VII helmet bore the facial section of a bleached skull upon its forehead. The Chaplain's honours were many: a blood-red adamantine mantle flowed out behind him almost like a river of blood, and affixed to his left wrist was a master-crafted 'Terminatus' pattern storm bolter, the very same used by the mysterious Grey Knights of the Inquisition. The young Chaplain had earned both the storm bolter and the admiration of the Grey Knights themselves a decade back, in a joint crusade where the Life Takers assisted the Grey Knights in storming the foul den of a mighty greater daemon of Slaanesh, Terrion leading the vanguard of both Life Takers and Grey Knights and eventually banishing the foul daemon back into the Warp single-handedly.

"Brother-captain," said Terrion in a calm, yet resonant voice that echoed around the command chamber. "I see we have arrived at last."

"We have indeed, Chaplain." Replied Sophion, who turned his attention back to the planet beneath them. "Although I can hardly imagine this tainted rock being a lost reliquary of the Imperium." Said the captain after a moment of silence.

"His will is beyond our imagining, brother-captain." The Chaplain walked up next to Sophion, an equally-impressive sight as the veteran captain. "But we are not needed to comprehend it. We simply obey."

"Of course. As always."

The strike force aboard the _Rebuker _had come to Salthion at the behest of the Ecclesiarchy, whose scribes had contacted the Life Takers insisting that during the time that Salthion remained an Imperial holding, the Ecclesiarchy had maintained a small but notable mission there, which had established a sacred reliquary to safeguard several holy artefacts and sacred texts. Their most pressing objective was to find and secure the reliquary before its remains could be desecrated by either the xenos taint of the orks or the foul heresy of the Traitor Legions, and recover whatever relics may remain. Due to the severity of xenos and heretic presence on Salthion, the Chapter Master had authorized the deployment of several First Company veterans as well as two squads from the Second Company.

A servitor peeled off a string of machine-code, an unintelligible buzz that Sophion had taught himself how to understand. The _Rebuker_ had always been relatively undermanned, and as such most of the command structure that served aboard it took the effort to learn some of the binary language that the servitors spoke. They could not replicate such a metallic, grating noise without a bionic vocabulator unit, but at least they could understand what the servitors were saying.

"We will be within deployment range of the planet within the hour, Chaplain." Said Sophion.

"Good. The plan, brother-captain?"

"I will take the veteran squads from the First Company to draw the attention of the hostiles outside the city, as well as sergeant Kallius' assault squad." Sophion handed the Chaplain a data-slate showing the battle plan. "You will lead the others into the city itself to search for the reliquary."

"I will join our brothers at the drop bays, brother-captain." Terrion bowed his head, a gesture of farewell.

"Go with the Emperor, Chaplain." Sophion nodded, as the Chaplain left the bridge through the doors. The captain returned his gaze to Salthion, the planet slowly revolving around the nearby yellow star. From orbit, one could hardly tell that its surface was a contested battleground, but the _Rebuker_'s sensorium arrays had already identified numerous clusters of ork infestation near their target. The planet was far from the pristine Imperial world it used to be several hundred years ago.

Another servitor sounded off a buzz of machine-code informing the captain that the strike cruiser was about to enter high orbit around Salthion. Turning wordlessly from the command dais, Sophion headed through the doors and made his own way to the drop bays, reflecting as he went.

They were Space Marines. War was beckoning, and it would not do for them to be late.


	3. Part 1, Chapter 2

Part One, Chapter Two

As the drop-pod slammed into the ground with a bone-jarring crash, Terrion was already freeing his restraints and cycling through the last diagnostics of his power armour's internal systems when the doors fell away and flooded the interior with light. His ceramite boots crunching down on the broken rockcrete at his feet, the Chaplain swiftly took stock of the situation. The two drop-pods of his strike team had landed right at the entrance of the ancient city, the massive hive impossibly large and obscured from orbital scanners by thick clouds of dust and ash. It once had a name, but after hundreds of years of neglect, it had been all but forgotten.

"Form up! Watch your sectors!" called Sergeant Rios, assembling his tactical squad around him. Four battle-brothers of the Second Company took formation around their brother-sergeant, racking boltguns and checking equipment. Brother Pirius hefted his heavy bolter, its long ammunition belt jingling as he walked. Behind them, Sergeant Tremarus and his Terminator squad stomped into view, their mammoth suits of Tactical Dreadnought Armour making them easily twice as tall as a man, carrying double-barrelled storm bolters in their hands. This deployment was all Sophion could spare from the main force, which was even now moving to engage the greenskin infestation near the outskirts of the city.

"Chaplain." Rumbled the Terminator sergeant in greeting, his face inscrutable behind his broad, skull-white helmet. Terrion nodded in reply, gesturing for Tremarus' squad to take the lead.

The hab-spires of the ancient hive towered over them like grim sentinels, carrion birds cawing and fluttering around their hollowed structures to indicate an utter lack of life. Broken rockcrete littered the roads and every here and there was a pile of debris, masses of twisted metal where some of the smaller hab structures had collapsed after centuries of ill-repair. But Terrion immediately noted evidence of activity as he spotted a foul mark of the Fell Gods, the putrid sign of Nurgle, scrawled over one of the walls. Sergeant Rios knelt down, poking at a patch of broken rockcrete with his bolt pistol.

"Someone has come through here." The tactical sergeant remarked, leaning his considerable weight on his power sword as he looked up along the road, noting the distortions in the rockcrete that indicated heavy footsteps. "Not long ago, it would seem."

"Should we suspect an ambush?" voiced one of the Marines, brother Travok, of Rios' squad.

"We should always be suspecting an ambush." Replied brother Morghost, one of the Terminators.

"Brother Tremarus," said Terrion, raising his hand to silence further debate. "Take your squad and move down the centre of the street. If there is an ambush waiting for us, draw the cowards out of hiding. Brother Rios," the Chaplain drew his crozius arcanum, the ancient power mace crackling with energy. "Left side."

The Life Takers hastened to obey, the Terminator squad steadily advancing down the centre of the street, presenting the most obvious target to any guns that may be waiting. In their Terminator armour, the battle-brothers of Tremarus' squad were as tough as any battle tank, and could weather more than enough punishment to give the Space Marines time to bite back at their attackers. Rios led his men down the side over trails of broken rockcrete, his Marines staying to cover, ever watchful for any signs of danger.

"Contact." Rumbled Ishan, the Terminator's storm bolter rising to firing position and sighting down the street.

"Hostile?" voxed Rios.

Before any of the Life Takers could say anything more, a hail of gunfire flashed in and peppered them with what could only be bolter fire. Tremarus grunted as a bolt round struck his scarred chestplate, shifting the Terminator slightly on his feet. Bestial wails and foul chants resounded further down the road, coming from a ruined hab-unit. Reacting instinctively, the Marines returned fire with their own weapons, their bolters answering their assailants' shots in a percussive, rattling staccato. Auto-senses tracked movements and outlines brief shapes in the ruined apertures of the structure, highlighting the silhouettes of hulking, pustular figures in power armour.

"Evidently." Growled the Terminator sergeant as his storm bolter barked an angry reply to the shot that had connected with his armour.

"Brothers, with me!" Roared Terrion as he surged forwards to meet the foe, incoming fire zinging around him like a swarm of angry wasps, cutting the air with his ancient crozius, the relic hammer sparking with power. "By blood and honour!"

"_We kill for the Emperor!_" came the thunderous cry from the other Life Takers as they completed their revered battle-cry, their words punctuated by the sharp reports of their bolters.

Slowly, their foul enemy rose to meet them, emerging from the shadows in disorganised ranks as their slow, implacable footsteps took them towards the charging Life Takers. Their algae-green armour corroded and bloated with decay and rot, the very ceramite warped by disease, the Plague Marines came into full view, their own twisted boltguns steadily spitting bolt rounds at the Life Takers. Terrion felt his hatred rise as he beheld the foul traitors of humanity in the flesh, Chaos Space Marines that had given their lives and souls to the Plague God, Nurgle, and their very presence was sickening and repulsive. Putrid bile dripped from weeping sores on their armour, every Plague Marine leaving behind a trail of steaming ooze behind him as they advanced in a wall of diseased plate armour. Their answer to the war-cry of the Life Takers was a long, drawn-out moan of ruined throats and lungs, a wordless call to their dark god.

Terrion's wrist-mounted storm bolter was bucking wildly as the Chaplain fired a steady tirade of bolt rounds at the enemy, the heavy shots punching into one of the foremost Plague Marines who staggered as explosive impacts slammed into his own armour. Sickening vomit-brown fluid spilled from the few wounds that opened up on the traitor's body, but the Plague Marine didn't seem to feel it as it returned fire with its own gun, punching a trio of bolts into the Chaplain's shoulder plate, scoring the ancient suit and tearing a piece of prayer script from the night-black ceramite.

The distance closed to twenty meters, ten meters, five meters. Terrion could smell the stomach-churning stink of the Plague Marines as he closed in, his armour's respirators insufficient to cut through the Warp-ridden stench. Behind him, he could hear the steady roar of Pirius' heavy bolter battering at the traitor Marines with a relentless hail of death, knocking some of them off their feet, their armour perforated with holes from the heavy bolter's fury. The snarl of brother Riddic's chainfist powering to life cut the air just as the weapon's howling teeth cut the air, the Terminator charging in an unstoppable advance. Several of the Plague Marines drew short, heavy blades in response, cruelly-edged swords that festered with plague toxins that could overwhelm a Marine's enhanced physiology and kill him within seconds of infection.

The first Plague Marine falls to Terrion in a spray of gore as the Chaplain's blazing crozius crashes down on him like a blacksmith's hammer, the metal wings of the aquila on its head smashing through the ceramite of the traitor Marine's armour and turning his upper body to ruined biological pulp. Drenched in foul liquid the Chaplain whirls around and sweeps his mace in a backhand strike that knocks another Plague Marine's head from his vile shoulders, putrid gore fountaining from the neck-stump as the severed helmet lands several meters away. The body takes a while to fall over onto its back, until Terrion kicks it over as he riddles the enemy with gunfire from his storm bolter. Bolt-traces streaked between the two sides as they exchanged furious volleys of gunfire, but it was an uneven match. The massed firepower of the Terminators' storm bolters and brother Pirius' heavy bolter caught many of the Traitor Marines in a howling crossfire, bloated figures folding and coming apart in sprays of corrupted gore, shredded by bolter fire. The Terminators were right in the thick of the fight, storm bolters blasting at point-blank range while their crackling power gauntlets tore through the traitors' armour, rending them asunder. Terrion spotted Rios duelling with a particularly large, hulking Plague Marine, the sergeant's power sword a glowing blur of coruscating energy as it clashed again and again with his adversary's broad, corroded blade.

"Let them feel our holy fury, brothers!" roared Terrion as he knocked a Plague Marine's legs out from under it with a sweep of his power mace.

"No mercy for the traitor!" answered Rios as his opponent made the critical mistake of drawing its sword back in preparation for a two-handed stroke. Like a striking snake, Rios' power sword lanced forwards and punched through the Plague Marine's midriff, spilling noxious ichor onto the sergeant's metal boots as Rios twisted the blade, mangling whatever passed for internal organs in his enemy's gut. The Plague Marine, all but impervious to pain, brought its sword crashing down on the sergeant's helmet, but before the blade could connect a gladius flashed in and parried the stroke. Brother Jadin, one of Rios' Tactical Marines, grinned savagely as he threw back the Plague Marine's blade and drove his gladius straight into the traitor's rotted visage, the metal blade passing straight through the remains of the Plague Marine's brains as it burst from the back of its skull.

The fight did not last, and the final Plague Marine quickly disintegrated into a bloody heap as Pirius placed a dozen bolt rounds into its torso. All that remained of the enemy were lumps of foul-smelling gore and ruined husks of power armour. No victorious cheer rose among the Life Takers, no rousing calls to celebrate their triumph. Spent magazines were replaced and storm bolters were rearmed with cold precision, and the Life Takers pushed on, weapons at the ready.

There was nothing worth celebrating at that point. It was no victory, merely the first taste of battle that they would be soon plunging into as they advanced into the foul heart of the city. They would rejoice when they had finished their mission, and only then. For now, they had the Emperor's work to do, and none of them wished to be found wanting.


	4. Part 1, Chapter 3

Part One, Chapter Three

The huge greenskin beast rose up at him, crude weapons that tried to pass themselves off as blades in each fist, howling the foul war cry of its species into Sophion's face. As the ork's blades clattered off the plasteel surface of his storm shield, he rammed his master-crafted chainsword straight into its open mouth. The Life Taker's weapon burst from the back of the ork's neck in a fountain of gore, the monomolecular teeth of the blade already slick with fungal greenskin blood.

A steady hail of gunfire struck his storm shield, heavy slug-rounds fired from a host of ork stubbers that bounced off the energy field that emanated from the shield's micro-generators. Sophion cursed angrily as he spotted a cadre of orks emerging from one of their primitive shelters, clutching junked firearms that could only be called firearms with a good deal of grace.

Before Sophion could react to the threat, runes flashed across his auto-senses, alerting him to the arrival of several of his battle-brothers. A vicious barrage of bolter fire streaked into the ork mob that was assailing him, blowing the greenskins to pieces. Turning, he spotted sergeant Duran and his squad of sternguards slipping seamlessly into tactical formation, their targeter-outfitted bolters chattering a staccato reply to the long, ripping bursts of greenskin guns. Duran, a relatively young member of their Chapter's elite, gave Sophion a grin from behind his bone-white helm, which Sophion couldn't help but return. Within seconds, the orks were nothing but ruined chunks of gore piled on the ground.

"What news, brother-sergeant?" Sophion voxed as he charged forwards to meet the advance of yet another greenskin mob. The camp they were assailing was small by comparison, but the orks that infested it were interminable in number. The assault had barely begun and the Life Takers under Sophion's command had already dispatched dozens of the beasts, but more simply kept coming from their hideouts and foxholes dug into the earth of Salthion.

"They are resisting, brother-captain." Duran replied. "It would be boring if they did not, eh?"

"Focus." Another voice joined in on the channel, this one far more humourless and embittered than Duran's. Behind Duran's squad came the second squad of sternguards, with the veteran sergeant Alric at the head of the formation. The two squads made for eight sternguard Marines in total, a far cry from what they would have been at full strength, but the formation was more than a match for the ill-disciplined greenskins they faced today. More bolter fire, fast and accurate, punched a swathe through the greenskin ranks that rose to meet them.

"Just enjoy the hunt for once, Alric." Jibed Duran over the vox.

Sophion didn't hear Alric's indignant reply as the tidal wave of ork bodies slammed into him, pressing in as a sea of green muscle against his night-black ceramite carapace. His chainsword screamed its mechanical outrage as he hacked mercilessly around him, breaking bestial faces and limbs with smashing blows of his shield. Fury coursed through his veins as he laid a score of xenos heathen low. Behind him, standing in an implacable line of armour, the two veteran squads overlapped their fields of fire, bolt-traces streaking into the green tide and detonating within their bodies in explosive puffs of bone and shredded meat. The greenskins could not even get close to the sternguard formation without being riddled with bolt rounds, and certainly not with the Life Takers captain halting their advance with his chainsword.

There was a deep mechanical roaring that filled the air, so loud it drowned out even the raucous roaring of the greenskins themselves. A huge metal shape smashed through a flimsy ork hut, smoke billowing in thick geysers from exhaust pipes on its body.

"Battlewagon!" called out brother Ricar, one of Duran's, the closest Life Taker to the new threat. The greenskin engine was crawling with ork warriors who clung to its side, firing junk-pistols or waving axes in free hands as the ramshackle vehicle bulled its way through a knot of their own brethren. Crude ork sigils were daubed on its hull, and a pole of grim skull-trophies extended into the air from behind the pilot compartment, where a greenskin wearing dirty goggles sat at the controls of the battlewagon.

The sternguards turned their attention from the ork mob, which had halted their charge to behold their armoured vehicle attacking the Space Marines. A turret on its back swivelled to take aim, a quartet of heavy stubbers crudely welded side-by-side and pintle-mounted on the gun carriage. Brother Ferros stumbled, grunting angrily as a storm of bullets rained on him, his power armour shivering beneath the tirade of the orks' rapid-fire guns. A few lucky shots struck Ferros in the vulnerable joints of his armour, causing chemical-rich Astartes blood to seep from the wounds.

"Strike from the sky, brothers!" Sophion roared into the vox as he powered his way towards the battlewagon, knocking aside orks who tried to check his advance with blows of his shield. He cursed as he spotted a small gang of orks struggling to set up a large-bore auto-weapon, called a "deffgun" in greenskin language, on a nearby hill. He blink-clicked his visual systems to lock onto their position, sending the coordinates over the vox-link to the Space Marines who were seconds away from arriving.

"Death from above!" answered the voice of sergeant Kallius, and in the next instant a quartet of armoured figures literally fell out of the sky, wings of roaring flame issuing from their back-mounted jump-packs. The three battle-brothers of the assault squad crashed down on the ork gunners with the force of a fully-armoured Astartes warrior at high velocity, the impact creating small craters as they literally drove the greenskins into the ground, crushing them beneath ceramite boots.

The assault squad's sergeant had diverted his flight trajectory in mid-flight, and even now Kallius was descending straight on top of the battlewagon. The huge ork vehicle shuddered as the assault marine slammed into it, Kallius roaring at them past the beaked visage of his Mark VI helmet. An ork reeled at him, using its pistol like a club, and was rewarded with the amputation of its limb as Kallius' chainsword sheared clean through the greenskin's arm. As the ork toppled from the battlewagon, howling in rage and pain, the assault sergeant turned and fired his plasma pistol, sending a brilliant sun-flare of heat into the back of the greenskin pilot's head. The ork simply ceased to exist, along with a good portion of the battlewagon's frontal section as the plasma bolt incinerated flesh and metal to dust.

The rest of the assault squad, three Marines not including Kallius, was already rushing down the hill, firing their jump-packs in intermittent bursts that sent them crashing into groups of greenskins, scattering them like matchsticks. Their bolt pistols snapped off shots that thunked into greenskin flesh as they carved into the foe with shrieking chainswords. One of them, brother Zaphon, was unhooking a meltabomb from his belt, arming the explosive charge as he sprinted towards the battlewagon's flank.

"Brothers! Dragonfire, at will!" snarled Duran, and the sternguards of his command instantly ejected spent magazines, replacing them with sickle-clips loaded with dragonfire ammunition. As they fired, clouds of superheated, ignited gases instantly wreathed greenskin flesh where the bolt rounds impacted. Orks panicked and scattered as they were set ablaze, gibbering and thrashing about as the dragonfire rounds' payloads incinerated them slowly. The sternguards did not even need to hit a greenskin to set him alight, simply placing the rounds near a clutch of greenskins so that the bolt round could discharge a cloud of fire.

Kallius leapt off the battlewagon, landing beside Sophion as Zaphon hurled the meltabomb against the side of the ork engine. There was an intense flare of heat as the sub-atomic charge detonated, and the battlewagon's hull was reduced to a molten husk.

Orks were fleeing in earnest, now, as they saw their prized engine slain by the Life Takers. Sophion knew that the ork was a cowardly creature at best, only truly fearless when it had a countless host of its brethren around it. But before many could truly quit the field of battle, a huge ork, fully half again as large as its kindred, emerged from a particularly grand scrap-hut. Sophion's face cracked into a grin as he beheld the greenskin champion, its size inflated by the thick plates of metal bolted to its skin, and the crude bionics that protruded grotesquely from its arms, legs and back. Its left arm was clutching a huge chainaxe that would have taken three humans to lift, and its right arm was a monstrous industrial claw that looked like it could crush a tank between its pincers.

The greenskin champion began swatting its lesser brethren, snapping bones and splitting skulls in an attempt to rally their courage. It stomped towards the Space Marines, staring at them with piggy black eyes that radiated murder and hatred, its fanged maw open wide in a bellowing roar that made orks around it cringe with fear and awe.

The Space Marines remained undaunted by the sight of such a terror.

"Kallius, on me." Sophion said calmly, and the assault squad took their formation at the head of the Life Takers, flanking their brother-Captain on either side. Behind them, eight sternguards trained their bolters on their foe, tracking individual targets in the greenskin mobs.

They were twelve Life Takers, against a hundred orks.

_Good odds,_ thought Captain Sophion as he raised his chainsword and lunged.


End file.
